Judge rejects Klamath Basin plan

Federal agency's water allocation called not good enough for fish

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, July 17, 2003

GRANTS PASS, Ore. -- A federal judge yesterday declared that the government's plan for balancing water between Klamath Basin farmers and threatened coho salmon violates the Endangered Species Act.

But Judge Saundra Armstrong, ruling from Oakland, Calif., said she will not limit irrigation water for farmers this year.

For years, farmers, ranchers, downstream Indian tribes and environmentalists have struggled to control a limited water supply in the Klamath Basin.

The arid region straddles two states -- southern Oregon and Northern California.

Yesterday's ruling found that the biological opinion produced by NOAA Fisheries to protect threatened coho salmon in the Klamath River was arbitrary and capricious.

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The steps ordered by the agency to protect coho salmon weren't good enough because they relied on actions by states and private parties that were not reasonably certain to produce higher river flows for fish, Armstrong found.

Further, the judge found that NOAA Fisheries failed to establish a threshold for how many threatened coho could die under the plan before the agency would take another look at water allocations for fish.

However, due to the conflicting and uncertain nature of scientific opinion on whether increasing flows would help salmon, the bureau did not violate the Endangered Species Act, the judge found.

Armstrong wrote that normally after finding a biological opinion arbitrary and capricious, a judge would completely throw out the document. However, because she found that the plan for providing short-term river flows was valid, she would leave the biological opinion in force while it is changed by NOAA Fisheries.

The judge denied the Yurok Tribes' request for a declaration that the Bureau of Reclamation breached its treaty responsibilities to protect salmon by producing low river flows that resulted in the deaths of 33,000 adult salmon last summer.